Video: Global artists reassess African womanhood

Chris Bergeron

Saturday

Sep 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMSep 27, 2008 at 8:10 AM

Visitors are invited to see black women through the varied eyes of their African communities, colonial oppressors and artistic sisters in "Black Womanhood," at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center of Wellesley College.

From Aunt Jemima to Michelle Obama, black women have been portrayed in ways both demeaning and exalted.

Depending on who's looking, they are nurturing mothers or grinning mammies, bare-breasted African "specimens" or empowered equals claiming the right to depict themselves in a global world.

Visitors are invited to see black women through the varied eyes of their African communities, colonial oppressors and artistic sisters in "Black Womanhood," at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center of Wellesley College.

Comprising over 100 prints, photos, sculptures, paintings, textiles and videos by artists from around the world, it was organized by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

Informative but rarely didactic, this show offers three distinct kinds of art to illustrate its main premise: until recently, black and Africa-descended women have been depicted by everyone but themselves with troubling results.

Subtitled "Images, Icons and Ideologies of the African Body," it remains on view through Dec. 14.

Provocative and thoughtful in equal measure, this exhibit examines how a new generation of largely black and female artists from around the world is unshackling its collective self-image from oppressive portrayals of the past.

Organized dialectically, it examines traditional African and colonial depictions of black women in two sections that react to one another like a affirming thesis and negating antithesis.

Synthesizing both views, the third and largest section fairly explodes with bold, hilarious, outrageous and profound works by contemporary artists.

With breasts like missiles, Sokari Douglas Camp's steel, wood and chicken wire sculpture suggests a knight in shining armor having a gender identity crisis. With half-filled baby bottles hanging over her breasts, the blue-painted woman in Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons' photo repudiates maternal stereotypes. A sculpted black woman lies naked on the gallery floor, her thick hair spilling out into an enormous ball of yarn.

Whether viewed first or last, this section, "Meaning and Identity: Personal Journeys into Black Womanhood," fulfills the exhibit's premise from African soil, beyond soft-core colonial porno into a celebration of contemporary global creativity.

Of the numerous intriguing works, among the most striking are two by Jamaican-American artist Renee Cox who subverts the doleful history of Saartjie Baartman with hard dark wit.

An orphan whose buttocks were grossly enlarged by disease, Baartman was taken to Europe in 1810 and exhibited for five years in circus side shows where she was called "the Hottentot Venus" before dying of an unknown disease. After her death, she was dissected and her skeleton, brains and genitals were displayed and kept in museums until they were returned to South Africa following a request by Nelson Mandela.

In a large photo, Cox lounges nude on a couch holding a small whip, turning her own backside to viewers as if to repudiate the indignities suffered by Baartman. In a large gelatin print photo titled "Hot-En-Tot," Cox wears nothing but prosthetic breasts and buttocks that mock Western obsessions with black anatomy.

A lecturer in the college's art department, she teaches a seminar based on the exhibit.

"This exhibit is for everyone. It will help anyone who's hoping to learn about a culture that is not their own by changing and expanding the notion of black and African women," said Hyacinthe, who just completed her doctoral studies in art and architectural history at Harvard University.

While the most spectacular work is in the large central gallery, the first two sections establish an important historical foundation for the exhibit.

In separate but adjoining galleries, viewers will see two contrasting images of African women.

In the first, "African Cultural Perspectives," masks, figurines and other ritual objects made by mostly male artisans depict women as child-bearers and nurturers. Prevented by local customs from making art with certain tools, African women created clothes, beadwork and fabrics used "in ritual performances that defined expected social behaviors," Hyacinthe said. Offering a disturbing contrast, the second section, "Colonizing Black Women," showcases colonial-era European postcards portraying half-naked African women as brazenly sensual primitives.

Hyacinthe said African women and their descendants have nearly always been portrayed in demeaning stereotypes when artists of other countries "mediate" their identities.

In the section comprising European postcards, she said black women were typically posed in ways that "fetishized" them as servile, sexual and less than completely human.

"We like to control what we fear. Our fear comes from not understanding. This process is laid bare in this exhibit," said Hyacinthe. "These images (of African women) don't show their complexity to do them justice. These are all tricks to maintain the social order."

By providing contrasting views of how black women were previously portrayed, the organizers slyly ask by implication, how you regardless of gender and race see them.

"Black Womanhood" just might open up eyes of many hues.

THE ESSENTIALS:

Admission to the Davis Museum and Cultural Center is free. Located at 106 Central St., Wellesley, on the campus of Wellesley College, the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday until 8 p.m., Saturday noon to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 4 p.m. The museum is closed on Monday.

A film series, "Black Women's Bodies in Africa," is being offered in conjunction with this exhibit. Films will be shown Oct. 1 and 8, Nov. 19 and Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. at the Collins Cinema.

On Oct. 18, a symposium on the exhibit will be held from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Scholars will discuss cultural identity, aesthetics, politics and religion. To register, visit http://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu/whatsnew/black_womanhood_symp_reg.html.

For docent tour information, call 781-283-3382. The museum and adjoining cafe and cinema are wheelchair accessible. For more information visit, www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu.

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